The prime suspect in the hunt for the killer of the schoolboy Rory Blackhall was awaiting trial on sex charges against young girls. Canary Wharf is among his key clients.The third £1.3m solicitor works for the firm of Slaughter and May.. This represents a trebling of profits in just seven years.”It means only one thing,” the Legal Business editor, Tom Freeman, said. “Law is the most amazingly profitable business to be in.”A separate report published by the Lawyer magazine today describes 2005 as a year of “recovery all round”, in which partners’ profits for the big four law firms of the “magic circle” rose by 13.5 per cent. The combined revenues of Clifford Chance, Allen & Overy, Linklaters and Freshfields, reached £3.17bn, dwarfing the rest of the UK 100.Legal Business magazine says that there are now seven law firms who pay their top partners – lawyers who have a share of the equity of the firm’s profits – more than £1m. The highest paid of these partners received £1.3m.Alastair Dickson established Dickson Minto in 1985 when he and his fellow partner Bruce Minto jumped ship from the blue-chip firm of Dundas & Wilson.The firm, with offices in Edinburgh, Glasgow and London, passed the £20bn mark for private equity deals in 2001. A small band of British lawyers are earning £1.3m a year on the crest of a business boom that has seen their firms’ profits more than treble in less than a decade.

Seven elite law firms now pay their top lawyers more than £1m, research published today indicates. They come from a clutch of niche corporate practices and the group of elite firms that dominate the City, known as the “magic circle”.
This year the top 100 firms generated £9.63bn, of which nearly £3bn is pure profit shared out among the City’s top lawyers, Legal Business magazine reports.Comparisons with similar figures for last year show that profits are up by 8.9 per cent and overall fees up by 5.7 per cent. “How can they do such a thing?” Another friend and colleague from her former workplace, a care home in Sydenham, south-east London, said: “Zainab was a very, very hard worker She worked there full time and loved her job. “She was very, very friendly and I remember she also used to do hairdressing for friends, although she didn’t charge for it, it was only as a hobby.”. He last saw her on Friday evening as her boyfriend dropped her off outside the flats in his car and she kissed him goodbye “These people are cowards,” he said.

“She was really friendly and a peaceful person who I can’t imagine had any enemies. I would see her every day and I helped fix her car and put up shelves and was going to paint her flat. “She was like a sister to me,” said Raymond, whose partner lives in the basement flat of the four-storey housing association property in central Stratford. Meanwhile, a picture emerged yesterday of the victim as a hard-working mother of two who arrived in the UK 10 years ago and lived in a rented flat in Stratford, east London. She had plans to move with her boyfriend to Gambia ­ where I think he was from ­ and open a Caribbean restaurant.” He said that she lived alone in her one-bedroom flat and was visited by her Gambian boyfriend and her sister but worked long hours, including night shifts, at a care home. I thought: ‘My good God, what is happening?’ I was shouting: ‘Zainab! Zainab!’ I was squeezing her head. We were trying to keep her conscious but I think she was dead,” Ms Sillah said.

Yesterday morning, detectives were searching for evidence but their investigation will be hampered as no CCTV cameras overlook the hall. The building is protected by spiked metal fences and is on a square overlooked by the estate’s tower blocks and a 200ft high incinerator. I thought it was just a joke but, when I could smell the firing, I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is for real’.” The gang then stole guests’ handbags, mobile phones and wine before fleeing on foot “I ran to Zainab The baby was still in her hands There was blood pouring out of her head. You do not expect something like this to happen with all these people around, including children There was shock. People could not believe it.” Ms Sillah, also from Sierra Leone, described the terrifying moments when four men “calmly walked in” to the hall at around 10pm “They wore black facemasks You could only see their eyes They fired in the air three times … The baby had just been handed to Ms Kalokoh by its mother, also called Zainab.

Elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, Mississippi was subjected to both Katrina’s harshest winds and highest recorded storm surges 22 feet. “Can you help us?” Blanco said 200 people have been rescued in boats from rooftops, attics and other locations around the New Orleans area, a scene playing out in Mississippi as well. In some cases, rescuers are sawing through roofs to get to people in attics, and other stranded residents “are swimming to our boats,” the governor said. In one dramatic rescue, a person was plucked from a roof by a helicopter.

It just kept rising and rising and rising,” said Bryan Vernon, who spent three hours on his roof, screaming over howling winds for someone to save him and his fiancee. Across a street that had turned into a river bobbing with garbage cans, trash and old tires, a woman leaned from the second-story window of a brick home and pleaded to be rescued “There are three kids in here,” the woman said. Bernard Parish, Katrina’s storm surge swamped an estimated 40,000 homes. In a particularly low-lying neighborhood on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain, a levee along a canal gave way and forced dozens of residents to flee or scramble to the roofs when water rose to their gutters “I’ve never encountered anything like it in my life. But it weakened to a Category 4 and made a slight right-hand turn just become it came ashore around daybreak near the Louisiana bayou town of Buras, passing just east of New Orleans on a path that spared the Big Easy and its fabled French Quarter from its full fury In nearby coastal St.

I’m getting closer to the top 100, which was my goal at the start of the year. I know everybody thought I was stupid when I said it, but I still think I’m going to do it.”The wild card Murray coveted went to the Australian Mark Philippoussis, a US Open finalist in 1998, whose compatriot, the third-seeded Lleyton Hewitt, said: “In the big picture, I think it’s a good thing [for Murray]. And when I’m just starting out as an 18-year-old, why is there so much pressure on somebody my age to do so well? It would be better if everybody just calmed down.”That is easier said than done, because a year on from winning the US Open junior title Murray is preparing for his opening match as the youngest British male ever to play in the main draw. His opponent, Andrei Pavel, a 31-year-old Romanian, last entered British consciousness when he was defeated by Henman in the final of the 2003 Paris Masters.Whatever befalls Murray during the next two weeks, he deserves great credit for getting here the hard way, by winning three qualifying matches in three days last week. But that is not always possible at the highest level of an individual sport.”I’ve grown up reading everything about Tim Henman,” Murray said. “I am still in shock that he comes across as a failure because of what he’s done and what he’s achieved as a tennis player.

It may not be long before Murray finds himself all but isolated with the British flag.Ideally, Murray would like to be given time for his talent and physique to mature without being overburdened by expectation. From a British perspective, the year’s concluding Grand Slam championships at Flushing Meadows is notable for Andy Murray’s debut in a major tournament outside Wimbledon.
The 18-year-old Scot is in the company of Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski, two over-30s who, a week tomorrow, will share another birthday. But I think one of the reasons we do well here is that we tell some people: ‘We don’t want you doing that.’ Phil Greening is a classic example.”On his day he’s the most gifted hooker in the world We said to him: ‘We don’t want you playing at fly-half. We want you smashing rucks.’ And at the end of last season he started playing some brilliant rugby You have to play to your strengths That’s what we all have to learn.”.

Pierre Aidenbaum, the district mayor, said a dozen families from the Ivory Coast lived in the building, where the conditions were known by authorities to be “absolutely inadmissible and dangerous.” The city government planned to renovate the building and bought it six months ago, Aidenbaum said, adding that he started the process of searching for a place to relocate the families a month ago. Some 11 people, including five firefighters, had light injuries. About 130 firefighters battled the blaze, which burned in a central district of Paris. The latest fire comes just days after a deadly blaze killed 17 Africans in the French capital.
Three other people had serious injuries in the fire, which started late yesterday and ripped through a six-story building in central Paris where Ivorian immigrants were living, firefighters said. Six people, including a six-year-old child, were killed when a fire broke out in a rundown Paris apartment building where African immigrants were living.

It owes its creation to the Trinidadian immigrants who brought people together after race riots in the 1950s.. Revellers also enjoyed music from 40 sound systems.The party officially started on Saturday. From its humble beginnings in 1964, the carnival has grown from a children’s festival with a few Trinidadian steel bands to the huge street party it is today. Sir Ian was among an estimated 750,000 people at the three-day carnival in west London yesterday.
By late afternoon there had been only 81 arrests, most for minor matters.Sir Ian said that Europe’s biggest street festival was going “very well”.”The community has been very much behind the Metropolitan Police after the events of 7 and 21 July, and I think this is a very good example of that.”I am really sending out the same message to the terrorists as I have been all along, which is that London will endure and prevail and it will continue to endure and prevail.”A spokesman for the organisers said that on Sunday and yesterday about one million people had attended the event.Yesterday, in blistering temperatures, a procession of floats, steel bands and dancers in beautiful multi-coloured costumes made their way through the streets. The Notting Hill Carnival has sent a message to terrorists that London will “endure and prevail”, Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner has said.

After that we never really performed throughout the tour.”A performance described as the worst by a Lions team for 22 years saw Woodward’s men lose 21-3 in the first Test. In the Heineken Cup it’s the adventurous teams who win the trophy You can’t just shut up shop You have to be bold. And I think that’s what England will have to take on board, both from last season’s Six Nations and from the Lions tour.”Lewsey’s summer had begun in a way of which he could hardly have dreamt. Within six minutes of his first appearance in a Lions jersey, in the opening match against Bay of Plenty, he had scored two tries. He might have added a third late in a game which immediately installed the Wasps player as a favourite for the Test full-back’s jersey, but chose instead to put one on a plate for the Irish centre Gordon D’Arcy.In between, however, was an incident that had major consequences as the No 8 Lawrence Dallaglio’s tour ended with a dislocated and broken ankle.”People say that losing Lawrence was a decisive factor,” Lewsey said. “He’s obviously a big difference to any team, though I don’t think his injury can explain why we under-performed so badly.

Leeds were in dire straits at the bottom of the table, but they escaped relegation by playing some very positive rugby at the end of the season. I think you’ll see teams go out this year and play some attacking rugby. “I remember Stuart Barnes saying before the tour that you have to be bold to go out and win things. He’s right, because you’re not going to win by going on the back foot.”Look at club rugby.

Leicester and Wasps, the two most successful teams, played the most attacking style last season in the Premiership Sale attacked and scored lots of tries. You can look for reasons until you’re blue in the face, but the bottom line is that we lost the Test series 3-0 and we were too talented a group of players to do that.”A major consolation for Lewsey is that the Lions were beaten by a thrilling brand of rugby. He believes, moreover, that the positives that can be drawn from the experiences of Sir Clive Woodward’s team will soon be felt both at international and club level in the new season, which begins with next weekend’s opening Premiership programme.Lewsey points out that the most successful teams of recent years have played attacking rugby: New Zealand on the Lions tour; Wales in the Six Nations Championship; Toulouse in the Heineken Cup; England in the World Cup; and his own Wasps in the last Premiership campaign.”I don’t think we were taught a lesson in New Zealand, it was more a case of our experience confirming what a lot of people knew already,” Lewsey said. “When you’ve worked all your life to get in a position to achieve something you’ve dreamt of as a child, particularly when you think of the amount of ability we had in that squad, it was hugely frustrating. His instinct is to look forward rather than back, but the scars are deep and Josh Lewsey knows that lessons must be learnt.

Thankfully, we are not talking about the shoulder operation he underwent earlier this month, but the recent Lions tour. Lewsey is a rarity, a 2005 Lion who returned from New Zealand with his reputation enhanced rather than battered, but his sense of collective responsibility is such that memories of his summer Down Under will forever be dominated by the walloping inflicted by the All Blacks.
“I’ll look back on the tour with massive frustration,” he said. South Africa: Tries Habana, Januarie, Fourie; Conversions Montgomery 3; Penalties Montgomery 2.New Zealand: M Muliaina; R Gear, T Umaga (capt), A Mauger, J Rokocoko; L MacDonald (L McAlister, 69), P Weepu; A Woodcock, K Mealamu, C Hayman (G Somerville, 67), C Jack (J Ryan, 67), A Williams, J Collins, R McCaw, R So’oialo.South Africa: P Montgomery; J de Villiers, J Fourie, D Barry, B Habana; A Pretorius (J van der Westhuyzen, 36), R Januarie; O du Randt (E Andrews, 71-74), J Smit (capt), C J van der Linde, B Botha, V Matfield, J Smith, S Burger (J Cronje, 36-42), J van Niekerk.Referee: J Jutge (France).. They showed why they are No 1 in the world.”New Zealand, keeping their nerve, took a line-out ball deep in Springbok territory, drove it forward and the hooker Keven Mealamu saw a gap and plunged over for the winning score.The All Blacks deserved it, but for those looking beyond this match, the portents may be ominous. At times, New Zealand’s most potent attacking weapon was their centre Aaron Mauger, for the way he kicked the ball downfield.New Zealand: Tries Rokocoko 2, MacDonald, Mealamu; Conversions MacDonald 3, McAlister; Penalty MacDonald. Against most sides such a revival might have sufficed.”You have to give credit to the All Blacks for the way they came back at us,” said the Springbok coach Jake White. “Their all-round game was excellent and they were more competitive at the breakdown.

Her first novel ‘Camberwell Beauty’ was a collection of short stories. Best joke: “A man goes to the doctor and is told there’s good news and bad news. If you find a penis in there, it’s not time.” Joan Rivers Appeared on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ in the 1960s and in the cult movie ‘The Swimmer’ with Burt Lancaster. The Brooklyn-born comedienne transferred successfully across the Atlantic in the 1980s Best line: “You have to be careful when you date older men They don’t tell you the truth.

A friend of mine dated an older man who never told her that he was wearing a hearing aid. She stuck her tongue in his ear and was electrocuted.” Caroline Aherne Mancunian comedienne appeared in ‘The Fast Show’ and then as the sweet and disarmingly candid elderly talk show host Mrs Merton Starred in groundbreaking comedy ‘The Royle Family’. Best line: [As Merton to Debbie McGee] “So, what attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?” Meera Syal Wolverhampton-born writer and actress, and pioneer of British-Asian comedy. Her relentlessly deadpan delivery centres on jokes about her weight and the failings of men. They have earned her a considerable mainstream following although she is famously loathed by ‘The Sun’s’ television critic Garry Bushell.

Typical observation: “How do you know if it’s time to wash the dishes and clean your house? Look inside your pants. Best Ab Fab moment: “Local anaesthetic? Local anaesthetic? What is this – Eastern Europe? I want total sensory deprivation and I want it now.” Jo Brand A former psychiatric nurse, Brand first performed a stand-up routine using the name The Sea Monster in 1987. Pam Ayres Former civil servant who became an unlikely national comic star after winning the 1975 series of the talent show ‘Opportunity Knocks’. Best poem: “Oh I wish I’d looked after me teeth, and spotted the perils beneath All the toffees I chewed and the sweet sticky food.

And, in what was seen as another blow to the United States and Britain, the secretary general of the Arab League warned that adopting the constitution in its current form will be a ” true recipe for chaos” with reverberations around the region.

The draft document, approved by the Shia and Kurdish factions but rejected by Sunni Arabs, was finally delivered to the National Assembly at the weekend.But Amr Moussa, the Arab League secretary general, said yesterday: “I share the concerns of many Iraqis about the lack of consensus on the constitution. In the longer term they want, like so many other settlers, to move with their closest friends from Neve Dekalim. They have no desire to move to the West Bank settlements, because as Mrs Slater puts it: “I don’t like the mountains. I want somewhere green.” Their dream is establish a community of Neve Dekalim families in Galilee But either way “God gives us strength We are looking forward not back We are crying but we are looking forward.”. Thousands of Sunnis demonstrated in Iraq against the new constitution as the campaign for its rejection in a coming referendum swung into action. “You can’t fight for your house and pursue finding another house,” says Mrs Slater “I couldn’t do it. I don’t regret it.” One possibility is that they will get a caravan close to the “tent city” near Netivot, housing the recalcitrant settlers from Atzmona, where Mrs Slater taught at the kindergarten and where the children are missing her.

Even if he hadn’t been, he says, it wouldn’t have made any difference to their decision not to pack up before the Army came: ” We’ll take the money, but it’s really not that important.” But wouldn’t it have been better, if only for the children, to have planned for the future by negotiating with the government rather than face, as they now do, uncertainty about where they can live? At the very least they could, like many other settlers, already be living in caravans within sight of where their new houses will be built. Mr Slater always told his wife and children that this was a ruse to pressure them to leave voluntarily; now he seems to have been proved right. And meanwhile, Ariel Sharon has indicated he wants to see settlers like Mr Slater paid full compensation – a package worth $450,000 (£250,000) on average – along with those who left before the deadline. Last weekend, 10 days after their forced eviction and rather fewer before the Army bulldozers move into destroy it, Mr Slater went back to the house and supervised the soldiers who were packing their property into two shipping containers for temporary removal to the Army base at Kastina, north of Ashkelon. Families like the Slaters who stayed illegally in their Gush Katif settlements beyond the midnight deadline for voluntary departure on 16 August, were warned they would forfeit their chance to pack up their worldly goods and would lose up a third of their compensation.

“I don’t know if you can understand it if you haven’t seen the first series. I tried to explain what’s been going on, but that’s not my strongest point.” Is she afraid that bewildered newcomers to Nighty Night will be wondering what all the fuss was about? “I was glad that there wasn’t much hype around the first series going out – I hate that pressure and that’s what I’ve been feeling on this one,” she says. “The worst fear is that it’s just not very funny and that it won’t work.”Despite Davis’ natural modesty, there seems little fear of that. But with a chutzpah that would have embarrassed even Dallas scriptwriters, she has resurrected the lot of them, and relocated their “shenanigans” to Cornwall.”We needed somewhere seasidey for Cath to recuperate, and Ibiza was suggested, but that’s not very Cath,” Davis says, although new viewers may not comprehend such nuances of character. How Deluxe is to be hived off has been much debated in the investment community. Meanwhile, she meddles in the marriage of her MS-suffering neighbour, Cath (played by Rebecca Front), and husband Don – played by Angus Deayton, in a role that may help to restore his credibility.

In the final episode of series one, Jill married Glenn (Mark Gatiss from The League of Gentlemen), while bumping off several of the characters – Davis claims she can’t remember which. “I’ll be happy if it’s as good as, but I’m fearful that it’s worse. But that is very much my nature.”
Nighty Night, for the uninitiated – and that probably includes most people – is a gleefully dark sitcom (a “sick-com”, Davis dubs it) about an evil suburban hairdresser called Jill (played by Davis), who, discovering that her husband, Terry (played by Kevin Eldon), is ill, starts to tell people that he’s dying of cancer. She even admits she’s not very sure whether the second series of Nighty Night is any good. “I certainly don’t think it’s better than the first series,” she says. From being seen as a versatile support actress serving the likes of Chris Morris, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, Davis is now recognised as a major comedy talent in her own right.

The trades union group accused executives of abandoning generous pension schemes for employees while feathering their own nests. Brendan Barber, the TUC’s general-secretary, said: “Too many directors have closed decent final-salary pensions for staff and replaced them with cheaper and riskier schemes. Meanwhile, directors have continued to build up enormous VIP pensions, as they tighten everyone’s belts but their own.”
The TUC’s PensionWatch report revealed that directors of FTSE 100 companies collectively share final-salary pension scheme benefits worth £900m, with an average pension pot of £2.5m each. The average director’s pension would be worth £167,000 a year if paid out today. The report also revealed that 85 per cent of FTSE 100 directors were members of a final-salary scheme, even though just 38 per cent of their companies have final-salary plans open to all members of staff.

Directors were also likely to earn pension rights more quickly than employees, the TUC said.The report did not name individual companies or directors, but BP’s Lord Browne is understood to have the largest pension fund among the companies studied by the TUC. They failed to meet earlier targets for 2004 which required 75 per cent of pupils to reach the standard in English and maths and 70 per cent in science. Although boys narrowed the gap in writing skills this year, they fell further behind at reading. This means there is still an 11-point gap to close in just two years for English and maths, and 10 points to make up in science.At the current rate of improvement these targets will not be met.

And after a surprise fall in science results last year, there was a sharp, four-point rise this year, to 70 per cent of pupils reaching the standard expected of 14-year-olds.Girls continue to outperform boys, with the gender gap now standing at 13 points in English and one point in maths and science. In maths, results also now stand at 74 per cent, a rise of one point. “Even if or when we do not meet the targets I still think the message of the targets is that whoever you are and wherever you are we want you to succeed.”That is why we launched the key stage three national strategy, to improve the quality of teaching, to set a faster pace of learning, and to make sure that children’s success at primary school continues on into secondary education.”This year’s results saw English scores rise by three percentage points to 74 per cent. Teachers’ leaders complained that children face too many tests and called for a radical review of the system of targets and tests.Jacqui Smith, the Schools minister, said that the results showed that pupils were “reaping the benefits” of the Government’s drive to raise standards in secondary schools.She argued that ministers had been right to set “tough” targets but yesterday acknowledged that they might not be met. By 2007, 85 per cent of 14-year-olds should be up to standard in English and maths and 80 per cent in science. Although the results of tests taken by all 14-year-olds in England this summer were the “best ever”, ministers are not on track to meet their challenging targets for 2007, figures from the Department for Education and Skills showed.

The English and maths results are so low that they still have not met the original targets set for last year.

The Government has set challenging targets for 14-year-olds. Ministers will miss their targets for boosting secondary school standards, national test results published yesterday suggest, with some subjects even failing to make the grade set last year. “Some pupils and their parents actually lobbied the teachers at parents evening to get their predicted grades lifted, and were successful. It doesn’t seem fair for others who argue their case and are refused.”It seems a lot fairer to look at your track record than to use guesswork.”Elaine Barker. Teachers are in quite a lot of power when they predict your grades and what they say could be based more on how much they like you as much as your ability.”The idea that some students manage to persuade teachers to change their grade is also a concern. It is so much fairer for them to look at what you have already done.”I do know of people who have actually decided to take a year out and reapply because they achieved so much more than they were predicted. She added: “The new system sounds like a really good idea and if it applied this year, I think I would benefit from it.

“There is a temporary deterioration in children’s capacity accurately to interpret emotions from facial expressions around the time of puberty,” he said.

“Exceptional tissue preservation shows this was a sophisticated structure It wasn’t just a piece of skin,” he said.. The inability to penetrate the minds of stroppy, angst-ridden teenagers is an accepted part of parenthood Now it appears the feeling is mutual. The largest flying bird today is the wandering albatross with a wingspan of about 11ft 6in. Dr Martill said: “Pterosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, they left no descendants.” Pterosaurs could walk on four legs using the “knuckles” of their hands.They flew with the help of a membrane, half a millimetre thick, between their neck, tail and wings. Details of the pterosaur – the first animals with backbones to fly – emerged at the British Association’s Science Festival in Dublin, where it was described by David Martill of Portsmouth University from work carried out by Dino Frey of the State Museum for Natural History in Karlsruhe.

Only fragments of wing bones have been found but from their dimensions the individual must have had a wingspan of 18 metres (59ft), Dr Martill said.

A flying reptile that lived 100 million years ago and had a wingspan of 60ft has entered the record books as the largest known animal to have ever taken to the air

Scientists discovered its fossilised bones in Mexico. Men are awful: arrogant, nasty creatures.”pandora independent.co.uk. He made a very authentic woman, didn’t he?”Lombard, 39, right with Winner, was speaking at the launch of the self-help book Everything I Know About Men I Learnt From My Dog.Asked about the book’s title, 69 year-old ladies’ man Winner says: “I think it’s rather an insult to dogs. Fortunately, he later became a fan.”* The sight of a pensioner, Michael Winner, wearing fishnet stockings and an apron (and speaking like a girl) in a car insurance advert has caused merriment in sitting rooms across the land.Fortunately, the great man’s new squeeze Paula Lombard has heartily endorsed the cross-dressing exercise “I thought he looked great as a woman,” she tells me “He looked cute Just like someone’s older sister. “I didn’t know him at the time (we didn’t work together until he was 17) but it now turns out one of them was from Matt.”He’d rung up to say the show ought to be taken off the airwaves. “He’s always pretended to her that he’s been utterly faithful, but Jenny says this is quite untrue.”* The comedian Matt Lucas owes his “big break” to Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, who employed him to bash a drum on the quiz show Shooting Stars.By way of a return compliment, Lucas has just made a tribute documentary about their 1990s sketch show Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out, to be released on a DVD of the programme.Ironically, it emerged during filming that the (then-unknown) Lucas was originally unimpressed by the show.”On the first night it was on telly, Channel 4 had 17 complaints,” Reeves tells me. She has now written to the paper, claiming: “Mortimer would say that, wouldn’t he?”Lord has an interesting theory as to why Mortimer should seek to deny this particular fling, despite having owned up to all the others in the book.”The reason for John’s denial is that when he had the affair (she was 23, he 46) he was already married to his current wife, Penny,” he says.